McLeod Law Offices

Today I battled a debt collector who was harassing one of my clients. I enjoyed myself, and I tend to when I know I am right. I am waiting for authority from my client to sue them. Here’s why:

My clients retained me to seek bankruptcy. They told the creditor (Discover Card) – and this collection agency (Nationwide Credit) that I was their attorney and to call me. They did, and on July 17 (shortly after they left a message seeking confirmation of retainer) I called and spoke to them and confirmed representation. But today, they called my client – and told my client that I never returned their call. They also told my client they were going to continue to call her until I returned the call. My client was troubled by this, since it’s my job to help her and her family get through this tough financial time.

So I called and spoke to the collector. She was a peach. She told me they the company never heard from me, and then in the same sentence, acknowledged that “my name was in the system” – and spelled incorrectly (McLeon). I called her out on that and said “if my name is in the system, then clearly you know I am her attorney. Why are you calling my client.” Her reply was that if I would “do my job and return the call” they would not bother my client. Can you sense how that my got my blood to boil?

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In November of last year, I wrote an article highlighting what I perceived to be some of the weaknesses in court rules that are exploited by unscrupulous debt collectors, their attorneys and their agents. I also pointed out in April that in Maryland, debt collectors were indicted. Those collectors were engaging what is called “sewer service”: representing to the court that a defendant had been served, when in fact they were not. The term “sewer service” is derived from the presumption that the process papers are tossed in the sewar, rather than properly given to the defendant.

Following last week’s series on the debt collection system in Massachusetts in today’s Globe, Warren Fitzgerald, president of the Massachusetts Bar Association had this to say:

An amendment to current small-claims rules may be required to ensure that notice requirements are meaningful. In terms of professional debt collectors, requiring them to serve personal notice on an individual who allegedly owes money may be necessary….Collection agencies and their attorneys have every right to pursue people who owe money, but they must do so lawfully. Lawyers in particular are governed by ethical rules that clearly prohibit some of the conduct described in the Globe series. If some lawyers are not obeying the rules, they should face disciplinary charges. Such behavior is an embarrassment to the overwhelming majority of lawyers in Massachusetts who are honest and ethical.

Was the Boston Globe’s four part series this week was just the wake up call that elected leaders needed to seek a revamping of the debt collecting industry? In what appears to be a collective quest to do away with the wrongs cited in the reports, leaders including state attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Tom Reilly to Boston Mayor Thomas Menino are vowing to seek various changes in response to the report.

Too little, too late.

Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, said Reilly “has failed to do enough to protect consumers in Massachusetts.” But Healey also found fault with the state court system. It has been, she said in a statement, “too lax, loosening notification rules for debt collectors instead of enforcing them to protect average citizens.”

Deval L. Patrick, one of two Democrats vying with Reilly for the Democratic nomination, was less direct in his criticism. But he said the lack of enforcement is stark evidence that, “at both the federal and state level, the government is on the side of the big players, and not the little guy.”

Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren comments Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren comments on the four part Globe series I have written about here:

It isn’t just the debt collection agents who get a black eye in this series; it is the government officials who are charged with the responsibility to watch out for the public and who instead made themselves the dupes of out-of-control debt collectors.

Do three things: First, read the series. Second, drop an email to the Globe to tell them what you thought—this makes a huge difference on the amount of follow-up reporting. Third, post a blog here about what you thought was the most outrageous act or your view about what is happing.[sic]

I want to taste this awful stuff one more time. The people who were featured in the Globe articles deserve at least that much, and the officials who didn’t help them deserve so much more.

If Professor Warren’s weblog is not in your favorites yet, it should be.

The final of the four part Globe Spotlight series, Debtor’s Hell, asks if regulators and legislators (and in some case gubernatorial candidates) unaware of the debt collection industry’s free-for-all or are they simply unwilling to act.

Unwilling? Or simply uncaring?

Every person who comes before the courts in Massachusetts has the right to be treated with dignity and respect, to be accorded an opportunity to present his or her case and to have that case decided in a way that is fair, impartial, and timely. The Boston Globe’s report on debt collection in small claims sessions of the District Court focuses attention on an “industry which has swamped the court dockets with lawsuits.”

The rest is here